The thing about having armed guards is that it would be completely a matter of luck and circumstance about whether they helped in any given situation. If someone walks in to a school carrying a weapon that fires 50 - 100 rounds per minute there could be many lives lost before the guard manages to kill him. Even more if the guard is on the other side of the school/in the toilet/on his break. Or if he is the first one to get shot.

Also, since many of the perpetrators of these things are students at the school themselves, it's not as simple as just taking down a stranger who's trying to force his way in.

We aren't exactly making it easy for someone coming along with a contrary view are we?

The deterrence argument doesn't butter any sprouts, as the shooters, iirc. know exactly what hey are doing and end up shooting themselves or know they will be killed. It's a bit like the deterrence argument for any terrorist. You are already in the field of death when planting a bomb etc. and believe you are 'right' in doing so.

I don't think there's many pro-NRA MNers In fact I don't think many British people can quite fathom the Americans' attachment to their weapons. I was talking to somebody about this around the election, watching a UK news crew had stopped people leaving a rally and asked why they would be voting for Romney. The very first thing the first person said was that she'd never vote for Obama because he'd try to take her guns away. How can that be anyone's first concern when they're choosing a president?!

The huge campaign in this country to prevent knife crime and get Teenagers (mostly) to see that carrying a weapon isn't an act of defence was frightening enough but step that up to guns and it's beyond comprehension for me

According to Huff Post there was an armed guard on duty at Columbine, and another nearby. Because it would be really difficult to watch their routine and simply strike at the other end of the building :S

(And of course the Fort Hood shooting happened on army base where I'd imagine there were a few armed personnel around?)

Sure BB - which is why I was trying to stick to the NRA and this 'initiative', rather than guns per se. Change like that will have to come from the people, NOT politicos, and that isn't going to happen until at least the next Mayan calendar/epoch change.

I was thinking about this all earlier today. There ate two things I considered:

Were the guns used in this attack purchased 'recently' e.g. After columbine? If so would make a strong case that things could have been done to prevent this.

The only solution I could think of working would be to make it extremely hard to get a gun license, and to enforce retrospective re-applications and crack down hard on owning without a licence. Perhaps to get a licence you'd have to demonstrate you've completed a course on safe handling, membership of appropriate club (eg hunting, farmers union), crb checks, health assessments etc. And for the person who authorises you as a gun owner to have potential manslaughter charges against them if something happens.

But doubt something like that will happen. This is a news story so tragic that it is really hard to even face thinking about.

I agree, milkjetmum, although that would be unbelievably expensive in a country the size of the US. Perhaps the weapons manufacturers could cough over a few bucks in the circs (Whilst I accept that technically they have done nothing 'wrong' by selling a legal product, however much they have campaigned to make more and more weapons capable of mass violence available to the general public).

Don't even get me started. I'm an American/Brit dual citizen, living in the UK but from a nice suburban NY town originally. Worked in an elementary school for 7 years before coming over here, and hometown very close to where the CT shooting happened. One of my HS friends was killed in a carjacking by an a**hole with a gun. America is, as it always has been, a very divided country. It's like two different species of people living in the same country. I can't defend people who believe in gun rights, but at the same time, I can sort of see how they got that way- guns are so ingrained in the American psyche that it's become part of their identity. Gun-lovers really do think that the police can't protect them enough so they should be able to carry around their own protection. It's all insane and it's just snowballing out of control. SOOO happy to live here now.

We live in rural France, where hunting (deer, wild boar) is a Sunday sport in the winter. You can buy hunting knives in a shop in the high street. So locals do own guns but there are no locks, let alone armed guards on schools.

I sat watching the news with a face like this tonight when I saw this speech.I don't know whether to laugh or cry at the madness of it.And no, of course banning all guns is unrealistic. I live in the Highlands with friends that are gamekeepers and stalkers, and the rich come up to the hunting estates for sport.I don't like it, I hate guns, but it's controlled.Why can't America have our laws? Make them difficult to get, tragedies will still happen, but they'll be far, far fewer.

I have actually lived in the US for 7yrs (we now, as it happens, live in Connecticut. We live just 10 miles away from Newtown (we're in Oxford, CT). However, we've only been here four years).

The NRA are very, very powerful. To think my children could be going into a school where there own teacher has a powerful weapon- to think how close they are to what is basically a killing machine, makes me sick. It frightened me how little distance we were from the shootings- 10 miles between my children being alive and my children being dead- and it frightens me to think they could have guns in schools.

A lot of people have guns in the US. I don't know why, I feel sick at the thought of owning one and even worse that it would be perfectly legal for me to own one. Unfortunately there are a lot of stupid idiots in this country- and they're ultimately one of the reasons why innocent children get murdered when they should be safe and happy at school.

I love the US a lot, and it's a great country to be in. But the NRA are very, very politically powerful, and guns are quite common (especially in either the South, or in rural areas).

I know a lot of people around here who think the NRA=murderers/allowing murders. I don't disagree.

The problem is there are so many guns. And although I'm sure in most countries, ordinary people would get their guns registered, in the US, it's not like that. There's a lot of people who committ no actual crime currently who would probably start taking potshots at the police. And then angrily talk about a police state/ Democrats bringing the country to its knees/ whatever, and actually have a lot of the people agreeing.

It's a great country, the US (I know, I live in it), but a mad one too.

The other problem is that the US is a nation of states who have their own laws and governing structures, so one state can have strict laws and the next one over can have lax ones, and you can just bring stuff over borders with no checks...